Our Kinder, Gentler Ancestors | Hacker News Reader

Our Kinder, Gentler Ancestors

online.wsj.com

11 pointsnewacc7 comments

"The once-popular killer ape theory is crumbling under its own lack of evidence, with 'Ardi' putting the last nail in its coffin. On the other side of the equation, the one concerning our prosocial tendencies, the move has been towards increasing evidence for humans as cooperative and empathic. Some of this evidence comes from the new field of behavioral economics with studies showing that people do not always adhere to the profit principle. We care about fairness and justice and sometimes let these concerns override the desire to make as much money as possible. All over the world, people have played the 'ultimatum game,' in which one party is asked to react to the division of benefits proposed by another. Even people who have never heard of the French enlightenment and its call for égalité refuse to play along if the split seems unfair."

Both the title, which I didn't think related as far back in time as it does, and the publication (the Wall Street Journal) made me guess wrong about what this submitted article is about. It's actually quite a thought-provoking read, by a scientist known for provoking thought about these issues, Frans De Waal.

So, in the 4-8 million years since H. sapiens began to diverge from what would become chimpanzees and gorillas, we gained the ability to walk and run, use tools, and use language. The females of our species stopped having estrus, the males' penises got bigger, we lost an amazing amount of hair, gained a fair bit of height, domesticated a bunch of animals and crops, and started the long process of irreversibly modifying our environment.

Despite this massive divergence from a common genetic ancestor almost 20-40 times longer ago than our species has even existed, folks still want to base what it means to be a human on what it means to be a gorilla or a chimpanzee.

To make an easier point: do you think you could be typing on a keyboard designed and manufactured by humans using a computer designed and manufactured by humans which communicates with other computers using protocols designed, implemented, agreed upon, and re-implemented by humans in order to use a service provided by a human so that humans could meet and talk about a tiny slice of the things humans meet and talk about if humans weren't embarrassingly social and cooperative?

I don't understand how the pendulum can swing from one end of the spectrum to the other so quickly in the social sciences?

Because many of the researchers became obsessed with the new information that they were observing from Chimpanzees. In fact its often stated that Bonobos and Chimps are basically our Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

In fact, despite been genetically further away from us, Orangutans are actually seen to be our closest relative in behaviour and by far in intelligence. Bornean Orangutans may actually live an existence similar to early hominids in that they travel far on the ground, however Sumatran Orangutans show more of our social instincts including tool use and group learning (they actually teach each other, opposed to the Chimp method of watching from a distance when new behaviours are exhibited).

The other reason for the radical changes is that Westerners had less access to the middle eastern countries to study the Asian primates (that like Orangutans can show us traits that were common before the divergence of the groups). Also the interest in Chimps is decreasing as they're increasingly being seen as predominantly over aggressive, which is actually an extremely uncommon trait amongst our close relatives (Orangutans and Gorillas are most dangerous to humans, not through aggression but through fear, where as Chimps are dangerous through direct aggression).

Orangutans are known for calculated reciprocity, a behaviour only exhibited in Humans and never exhibited in Chimps despite them being better studied and closer related. It shows an ability in Orangutans to track individual relationships in a group over long periods of time and to gauge how they should respond to individuals. Basically if you bought me a $30 gift, I'm not going to go out and spend $300 on you, and Orangutans do the same.

This leaves many questions like is it a second evolution of a similar behaviour, or did our common ancestor have this trait and the Pan and Gorilla genus both lose this ability. Either way it makes Orangutans a very important animal to study, because potentially they are our closest relative by means that they might be evolving along a similar path as humans.

>the move has been towards increasing evidence for humans as cooperative and empathic ...

Just walk with me into any museum in Europe and I will show you the counter evidence or let's go and interview the locals in Afghanistan or the sharks .. sorry traders in wall street.

The article never said we couldn't kill, only that we prefer being kind. Ever seen video of the US soldiers in Iraq petting the stray puppy?

There are people who don't care about others, but the most of them either never really grew up or they end up with psychological issues because of it.

http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=10978

Reply on news.ycombinator.com